Tuesday, November 29, 2016

See the previous post for the 2016 Yankees, which prompted this follow up for one of the legendary Yankee teams of the past, one which, despite its ability to score runs, carried starting players who hit much less than their peers.

Here are the MLB rankings of Yankees at their fielding positions. "Qual" is the number of players who qualified at the position among the 18 teams. American League teams played 162 games and the National League was in its final season of 154 games. Like the 1927 Yankees, the 1961 Yankees played one tie game, so respectively those Yankee teams played 155 and 163 games.

-->

OPS+

WAR

OBP

SLG

OPS

HR

Qual

1B

Skowron

10

11

11

11

11

7

12

2B

Richardson

11

11

10

10

11

7

12

SS

Kubek

4

3

10

3

5

4

11

3B

Boyer

14

3

12

12

15

10

15

CF

Mantle

1

1

1

1

1

1

15

RF

Maris

1

4

6

1

2

1

11

OPS+ is an average that measures what a batter does. It's On Base Plus Slugging adjusted for parks.WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is a total that supposedly shows a players total contribution, including fielding and base running. If you are skeptical of fielding data, be skeptical of WAR.Kubek did surprisingly well and Skowron surprisingly poorly. Richardson did surprisingly really poorly, one of three second basemen with negative WAR, including Hall of Famer Nellie Fox. In 2016 there was a lot of hitting by second basemen.

Mantle completely dominated center field but Maris much less so in right. Among qualifying right fielders were Hall of Famers Aaron, Frank Robinson, Kaline, Clemente. Aaron also qualified in center.

Neither left fielder Yogi Berra nor catcher Elston Howard had enough plate appearances to qualify, so lists for those positions are omitted. Both hit very well:
Howard: OPS+ 153, WAR 5.3, 21 HR
Berra: OPS+ 115, WAR 2.1, 22 HRFor 1961, Played 50% of games at the position, sorted by greatest Adjusted OPS+: